Sunday, December 04, 2011

Revenue officials accessing your private data - yet again

Now that the Sunday Times is behind a paywall it's all too easy for important stories to get less attention than they merit. Here's one from Mark Tighe, originally published on 2 October 2011, which deserves to be highlighted. The focus of the story is on fraudulent claims and other financial abuses, but there's also evidence of continued snooping by Revenue staff on the private finances of others. Excerpt:

THREE Revenue officials have resigned and another two have been dismissed after being caught committing fraud using the tax office's computer system. The cases are among 24 in which tax officials have been disciplined for abuse of access to internal records since 2009.

Disciplinary
files show three tax officials extracted €57,514 in fraudulent
rebates from the Revenue before being uncovered by internal
investigators. They also show Revenue had to apologise to a man after
his ex-wife, a former official, organised for another staff member to
change his tax status leaving him with no pay on two occasions.

In
one case, a female clerical officer who organised fraudulent tax
refunds totalling €32,500 for herself, her family and friends,
resigned in July last year before Revenue could terminate her
employment...

Another female clerical officer had her
pay reduced by two increments after she removed an allowance from a man
on the word of his ex-wife, a former colleague of hers in Revenue.

The
man wrote a letter of complaint to Revenue saying the removal of a
certain child allowance had led to him receiving two consecutive pay
cheques with zero net pay. The man, who has joint custody of his
children with his ex-wife, said the incident was "humiliating,
embarrassing and deeply puzzling". He was forced to approach the St
Vincent De Paul Society and his community welfare officer for
assistance.

Revenue managers said the incident had
serious implications for its reputation. They issued the complainant an
"unreserved apology". Investigators found the
Revenue staff member had transferred the man's allowance to his ex-wife
after she said she needed the money for a holiday.

The
official, who was a "close confidante" of the woman, was also found to
have made alterations to her own and her family's tax profiles. A CPSU
official said "everyone does it" when the alteration of her tax records
was being discussed in the woman's disciplinary interview. The official
complained about being "singled out", saying others did what she did.

In
another case a male clerical officer had his pay reduced by four points
for three years after he arranged for his exwife's tax record to be
labelled "crank/prank" when she tried to register for a single person's
tax credits.
The woman in question said her former husband told her about the salary details of men she dated after they separated.
The
man admitted altering his wife's file through a colleague, and
accessing other files and giving the information to his ex-wife. He said
he had believed his wife was having an affair, and looked up the men's
details for his own "sanity".

This story follows a similar piece in the Irish Independent earlier this year, which revealed that:

A female official... snooped on politicians and a former
Revenue chairman. The same woman improperly faxed information to a
financial institution about customers who were setting up SSIAs...

Most staff caught snooping on taxpayers' details are dealt with internally
and are given a one or two-year pay cut for their indiscretions, as well
as being barred from promotion for the same period...

One file quotes a union official as saying there was a "culture" of snooping within the department..
And
even the chairman of the Revenue Commissioners is not immune, with one
low-ranking civil servant found to be snooping on former Revenue
chairman Frank Daly's records in 2006 and 2007.